Popular music is stuck almost exclusively in 4/4 time

[MrGongGong]

Oh dear......

No, it doesn't follow at all. Nonsense.

So if I go on a stage
and have a pre-recorded backing track that ALSO includes my voice
and sing along to it I am miming if the recorded voice is louder than the "live" one ?

[MrGongGong]

I think it's called arguing black is white.

No it's not at all
and it's got nothing to do with taste, whether you think its a good idea at all etc
but has a lot to do with the nature of musical experience and performative action

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

So if I go on a stage
and have a pre-recorded backing track that ALSO includes my voice
and sing along to it I am miming if the recorded voice is louder than the "live" one ?

You'd just be an inept musician.
But I'm sure this is not the case.

[MrGongGong]

You'd just be an inept musician.

Always ?
(that is sometimes true !) but even though it's not my "thing" MsKnowles is definitely NOT an "inept musician"

[Mr Pee]

So if I go on a stage
and have a pre-recorded backing track that ALSO includes my voice
and sing along to it I am miming if the recorded voice is louder than the "live" one ?

Yes, if the audience can't hear the live voice, you're miming.

Simple!

[MrGongGong]

Yes, if the audience can't hear the live voice, you're miming.

Simple!

So in Peeland miming is appearing to be making a noise that someone else can't hear then ............. interesting

So following on from that

Is "miming" always a bad thing ?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

So in Peeland...

Sticking to the argument without becoming personal would be a better way to move forward.

[MrGongGong]

Sticking to the argument without becoming personal would be a better way to move forward.

I wasn't being personal
so how about

So in your world miming is appearing to be making a noise that someone else can't hear then ............. interesting

So following on from that

Is "miming" always a bad thing ?

better ?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Better.

[handsomefortune]

(lots of perfectly competent musicians have also mimed as part of their appearance at US state occasions).

have a pre-recorded backing track that ALSO includes my voice
and sing along to it I am miming if the recorded voice is louder than the "live" one ?

if so, a belief that spectators may find quickly becomes tedious in many contemporary circumstances, with the advent of loop pedals as part of live performance especially. yet audiences might not be nearly as stuffy about what they hear on recordings, as a rule..... which reflects a distinct division between common perceptions bout recorded music, and live performance as 'entirely separate'...(not that they really are).

perhaps people are a bit quick to accuse live performers of 'cheating' in some way, even when they may have personally witnessed the human voice being sung into a loop pedal/mic, for instance, before other layers are added?

perhaps audience expectations are actually more problematic than issues relating to performance? but we tend to view things the other way round, and resolutely out of context.

i don't suppose beyonce would have been able to perform like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_uY90zmbSk, had she wanted to, ......

and even if she had, some may still accuse her of 'cheating' ....simply as it forces two distinct, separate audiences together. whereas mainstream r&b and low fi experimentalism are probably best kept apart not least for their own sakes! though a minority seem to be able to fuse both successfully, but much depends on audience co-operation.

beyonce, as with other performers, isn't necessarily in control of performance environments, not least as big gigs are hardly spontaneous affairs, typically leave nothing to chance. surely these circumstances have absolutely nothing to do with an individual artist themselves.... since their personal opinions and decisions are not a part of the bigger equation of a large public event?

in a contemporary sense i agree that what has evolved musically as per practicalities and performance has got nothing to do with taste, whether you think its a good idea at all etc

the enduring popularity of 4/4 beats is imo because of social conditioning, what's marketed most, and sells most....people have often learned to dance publicly in what's deemed a socially acceptable way to that one particular 4/4 rhythm.....any deviation is considered by some as 'cheating'...or possibly despised as 'deranged', or some dangerous 'free form' style of dance/music, where it's deemed to deviate from what's expected. this rejection is usually precisely because dance/rhythm appears to be unpredictable, an unknown quantity.. and what's more on purpose. which breaks rigid social codes about supposed 'togetherness', as well as 'what's expected' at least on western dance floors.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/while_the_band_played_on

[jayne lee wilson]

I think the Beyonce thing matters because they didn't come clean. We were offered an image of live perfection and were expected either to connive in it, or (stupidly) say how wonderful it was. In a breakfast tv interview a pop publicist, ex of X-Factor, said that she thought it didn't matter because "we know Beyonce's great anyway"! Going on to say that it would matter much more with an unknown, and we would judge them more harshly! Would anyone have really cared if Beyonce had really sung live with a few raw notes or flat pitches? Maybe, maybe not - but it's a part of Pop's uneasy vanity that its producers and top performers want to keep up their pretences. Rather like those mascara adverts that say "false-lash effect" and use a picture of a model with actual false eyelashes. They later had to include "model shown with lash inserts" in the tiniest print with the ad.!
(And no, I didn't buy it.)

See Gary Younge's eloquent, balanced appraisal here:

http://guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/27/we-ought-to-care-beyonce-faked-it

[MrGongGong]

Technology isn't "cheating"

(except for those pesky modernists who insist on having VALVES on brass instruments ........ shocking )

[handsomefortune]

I think the Beyonce thing matters because they didn't come clean

a bit like people using someone else's sample....and not mentioning it/crediting it ....whereas no one's remotely bothered that they used the sample, but they do care if someone tried to hoodwink them?

part of Pop's uneasy vanity that its producers and top performers want to keep up their pretences

whilst also actively limiting audience expectations, AND conning them!

as posted, it's not audiences who have a problem imo - the real problems and limitations are usually rooted elsewhere.

[MrGongGong]

I think the Beyonce thing matters because they didn't come clean

a bit like people using someone else's sample....and not mentioning it/crediting it ....whereas no one's remotely bothered that they used the sample, but they do care if someone tried to hoodwink them?

Like Dvorak you mean ?

I think the "problem" if there is one (?) is that some people don't understand the semiotics of music
what its codes and meanings are
or could be

(http://books.google.co.uk/books/abou...d=1lOx9nr0aHkC)

[handsomefortune]

(from mr gg's last link), Small outlines a theory of what he terms "musicking," a verb that encompasses all musical activity from composing to performing to listening to a Walkman to singing in the shower.

verses the artifice that is

part of Pop's uneasy vanity that its producers and top performers want to keep up their pretences. .....'pretences' which imo include upholding, and maintaining distinct divisions between activities that are actually inter connected, or over lapping.... because it's perceived commercially advantageous to do so. (though it's certainly not creatively advantageous to do so, and doesn't benefit spectators sense of appreciation one iota in the long term). it's all supposedly for the sake of a tiny minority of 'top performers', not to mention the anual revenue from units they are obliged to shift in sales. so, arguably nothing whatsoever to do with music, or increased appreciation of it.